“Women were coming to the studio to shag Roger Daltrey. John Entwistle was ordering food from Harrods”: Pete Townshend claims he wrote Quadrophenia “to save The Who from losing touch” due to their success
Pete Townshend claims The Who’s 1973 album Quadrophenia was written to “save” the band from their own excesses during a period of wild success.
“When Quadrophenia was written, it had one principal function that almost everyone skips: to save The Who from losing touch with its audience,” says the Who guitarist in a new interview with The Times.
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By the early ‘70s, the mod movement that had shaped The Who’s early identity was a thing of the past. The band had ascended to a different world – one of superstardom, luxury, and indulgence.
“By 1971 the mods were history. By then it was all Rolls-Royces and swimming pools. Women were coming to the studio to shag Roger Daltrey. John Entwistle was ordering food from Harrods,” Townshend says. “I was living in a little house in Twickenham, trying to find some way to bring the band back to reality.”
That search led him to Quadrophenia, an album steeped in the complexities of youth and identity – an attempt to reconnect not just with their audience, but with themselves.
“[English actor] Ben Kingsley told me that when he was making [the film] Gandhi, working out how to represent someone who was essentially a political mover and shaker, Quadrophenia saved his life,” Townshend says of the album’s impact. “He realised that it is about spiritual resolve, about trying to get back to being a young person.”
Yet, for years, the musician felt that Quadrophenia’s deeper message was lost on listeners.
“I used to grouch about it all the time,” he admits. “Everyone talked about how Jimmy was this working-class boy who fucks up, his parents are alcoholics, blah blah blah… What nobody noticed was the spiritual message of Quadrophenia.”
His perspective changed, however, when the album was adapted into a ballet.
“I’ll be honest and say that when it came to the first workshop of the ballet, I wasn’t expecting much,” says Townshend. “Then I saw it: no rock ‘n’ roll bullshit, no drummer whiting out halfway through the show, the original message of the piece embodied by the movement of these young dancers. It meant Quadrophenia had another life.”
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